All hail Dr Akira Endo!

The Wall Street Journal has a few great science reporters and hats off today to Peter Landers for his story on the discovery of the cholesterol-lowering statins.

Dr. Akira Endo's work of the early 1970s has been buried in the annals of what ultimately became the first double-digit billion-dollar blockbuster drug class. I'm proud that I at least acknowledged his early work in in my very first post of this little ol' blog.

Mindful of natural history and fungal behavior in the wild, Endo made careful observations, used appropriate animal models and, of course, received almost no financial reward for his discovery of compactin. Merck wisely adopted the technology given to them by Endo's company and discovered lovastatin (Mevacor).

A great story about a great scientist.